SIMPLY INTAXICATING

Trying Times for Tribunals

CESTAT (Customs, Excise & Service Tax Appellate Tribunal) is a 33-year-old institution which was set up to provide quick and cheap justice in the domain of Indirect taxes. At one point of time all great senior advocates from the Supreme Court of India used to find it honour to appear before the Tribunal. But, in the recent years, there has been a marked decline in its performance and also the stature. Pendency before it has sharply gone up. For an assessee it has become an expensive proposition to get justice. Out of about one lakh cases pending, as much as 20,000 cases are more than seven years old. What has gone wrong? What can be done to restore the lost glory of this great forum of justice? To know the answers of all these questions, TIOL invited three domain experts - Mr Manmohan Singh, Former Member(T), CESTAT; Mr Sujit Kumar Sinha, former Chief Departmental Representative and Mr Sujit Ghosh, a noted advocate. The discussion was moderated by TIOL Founder Editor, Mr Shailendra Kumar.

you may also be interested in

25 Mar 2015

Black Money Bill is out and it has many more features which were not touched upon by the Union Finance Minister...

28 Feb 2015

The Union Finance Minister, Mr Arun Jaitley, today presented his reformist budget and did not disappoint any segment of the taxpayers' community...